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Wednesday, January 01, 2014

The New Year Eve & my first night out for the fireworks

The last day of 2013. Over the past ten days, the weather in Saigon was unusually cold , the temperature was down to 19oC and it was very very rare for the tropical city like Saigon. And we liked it - the cold. It suddenly reminds me of the whole night out in the winter in Osaka few years ago when I was there for the New Year Eve at the Universal Studio, it was so cold, we were almost freezing while queuing for the games.
Today it's getting a lot warmer, probably because of the festivities atmosphere!
Tonight for the very first time I celebrate the NYE with friends by hunting the best shots of fireworks - the symphony of light, to mark the end and the beginning.

The countdown is starting with the laser show, brightening up the city...

I would love to photograph the fireworks display for long but being an amateur - it's not simple, just imagine - spend the whole night out, with the huge and crazy crowd surrounded, you never know what you could expect and then finally end up with all out-of-focus photos!

Anyway tonight I feel more confident after listening to the expert's advise: "give it a go, you might be surprised at what you end up with". So I will post whatever I get after the tonight show.

Fireworks are something that evoke a lot of emotion in people…

as they are not only beautiful, spectacular to watch...

but are also always memorable for a special momentous occasions

The night before we checked the location, my friend even checked the wind direction...

but as we say "Man proposes, God disposes", we didn't expect the smoke...

for me, it was an amazing experience to witness the light show in the sky...

so I just pressed the button continuously despite the black smoke towards to our side

but I was quite happy to get even just a dozen of good ones among over 400 shots...

Promised to myself will do it better next time...

It's fun to be out there…but we never know what we could expect from the crowd next to you, honestly we were about to have a problem if we didn't have another two friends watching out for us while we were so concentrating on our photography. Special thanks to our friends!

Not let the bad people to spoil our night we continued with the light show…for another 10 minutes.

The night before we did scout for the best location, it was some other better place but it has been blocked for the security reasons, so we decided to "occupy" a slot on the bridge to district 2 but we need to go there hours earlier, otherwise our slot will surely be taken. Last night we went there around 9:30 PM…yeah it was full but my friend luckily found a quite good place to set up our camera.

Here you go…the crowd - the most spectacular show in the street...

but the good thing is we were moving, not stuck, it took us only 20' to get to the parking lot

Back to what we had for dinner out as our picnic last night while waiting for the light show, four of us, everyone prepared something, I don't know why I came up with Japanese curry, I thought I might prepare some cold sandwiches but when arrived to the bridge, seeing the crowd, I was terrified how we could eat in that human forest so having curry was not a good idea but anyway everyone seemed enjoy!

I prepared Japanese curry with chicken, very tasty, thick…usually served with rice.

and some almond cookies with hot tea for the night!

So my first night out for the fireworks display with my first attempt to take photos of fireworks was a big fun, also a bit tired as I got cold in the morning, but I happily had two drivers who picked me up and took me back home…at 2:00 AM in the next morning! Happy with the trip and Happy New Year to everyone!

I used to travel a lot in my corporate life but never took any photo, neither wrote down any note. In 2011 when I decided to take a break from business, I started my first blog, it was all of a sudden while chatting with a friend in a coffee shop, he created the first platform for me, taught me how to do it, even my blog's name came up just in a few minutes later! Anyway I first heard about blogging, back in 2007-2008 when someone sent me a link to some English reporter's blog about the street food he experienced in Vietnam. I would say that blog was my first inspiration. Viet Street Food is not only about the food that we eat on the street, even not about how to cook it, it's more about my memories related to that or another food experience, my feelings and some other stories in my life.